ore. A ring of dense trees ran round the back of the island
temple, framing the facade of it in dark foliage, and he could have
sworn he saw a stir as of something moving among the leaves. The
next moment his suspicion was confirmed, for a rather ragged figure
came from under the shadow of the temple and began to move along the
causeway that led to the bank. Even at that distance the figure was
conspicuous by its great height and Fisher could see that the man
carried a gun under his arm. There came back into his memory at once
the name Long Adam, the poacher.

With a rapid sense of strategy he sometimes showed, Fisher sprang
from the bank and raced round the lake to the head of the little
pier of stones. If once a man reached the mainland he could easily
vanish into the woods. But when Fisher began to advance along the
stones toward the island, the man was cornered in a blind alley and
could only back toward the temple. Putting his broad shoulders
against it, he stood as if at bay; he was a comparatively young man,
with fine lines in his lean face and figure and a mop of ragged red
hair. The look in his eyes might well have been disquieting to
anyone left alone with him on an island in the middle of a lake.

"Good morning," said Horne Fisher, pleasantly. "I thought at first
you were a murderer. But it seems unlikely, somehow, that the
partridge rushed between us and died for love of me, like the
heroines in the romances; so I suppose you are a poacher."

"I suppose you would call me a poacher," answered the man; and his
voice was something of a surprise coming from such a scarecrow; it
had that hard fastidiousness to be found in those who have made a
fight for their own refinement among rough surroundings. "I consider
I have a perfect right to shoot game in this place. But I am well
aware that people of your sort take me for a thief, and I suppose
you will try to land me in jail."

"There are preliminary difficulties," replied Fisher. "To begin
with, the mistake is flattering, but I am not a gamekeeper. Still
less am I three gamekeepers, who would be, I imagine, about your
fighting weight. But I confess I have another reason for not wanting
to jail you."

"And what is that?" asked the other.

"Only that I quite agree with you," answered Fisher. "I don't
exactly say you have a right to poach, but I never could see that it
was as wrong as being a thief. It seems to me against the whole
normal notion of property